Historically Inaccurate Fiction
geo...@ankerstein.org
I am reading a WWII novel which is historically (and
geographically) inaccurate. It both bothers me and
reminds me that it is fiction. Not only does the
author think that the Hartz Mountains are south of
Berlin, but he also thinks that a German truck convoy
drove from Königsberg to the Hartz in April, 1945.
None the less, a well written, fun story.
Thoughts?
GFH
--
Hal Hanig
Why would you expect fiction to be historically accurate? Seems to me that
you'd understand that by definition it could easily not have been. Anyway, the
Hartz Mountains located some 50 miles or so from Hobart, Australia are clearly
south of Berlin, although a German truck convoy enroute there would admittedly
have gotten uncomfortably wet enroute.
>
> GFH
--
Michael Emrys
geo...@ankerstein.org wrote on 6/17/05 11:35 AM:
> How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
I regard it as trash. It may be well written (from a purely fictional point
of view) and I may in fact enjoy reading it (as I have on more than one
occasion). It's still trash in my estimation.
Michael
--
Cub Driver
wrote:
>How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
There is a rule in science fiction that the author is allowed one lie
only. In the case you cite, the lie might be: suppose the Germans
trucked an atomic bomb to the Hartz at the war's end.... Now you are
reading a speculative thriller, and the details that follow had better
be accurate. Shifting the location of the Hartz would not be
acceptable!
It seems to me that Tom Clancy is an exemplar of this rule: he's
convincing on the small stuff, so that readers are willing to swallow
the big stuff.
-- all the best, Dan Ford
email war...@mailblocks.com (put Cubdriver in subject line)
Warbird's Forum: www.warbirdforum.com
Piper Cub Forum: www.pipercubforum.com
the blog: www.danford.net
In Search of Lost Time: www.readingproust.com
--
Duwop
> geo...@ankerstein.org wrote on 6/17/05 11:35 AM:
>
> > How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
>
> I regard it as trash. It may be well written (from a purely fictional
point
> of view) and I may in fact enjoy reading it (as I have on more than one
> occasion). It's still trash in my estimation.
Although it's also been my experience that those fiction books that have
obviously been well and deeply researched are often lacking in other
qualities. It seems those that research too much become overly enamoured of
the minutia of history rather than character development or story arch.
Locally there's a fairly large number of writers that like to base their
detective/mysteries in a familiar enviroment. I can't tell you how many
times these authors make basic geographic mistakes for places no more than
10 miles from their own door step. So that's sort of put larger geographic
problems in perspective for me, no matter how easy it is to look at a map.
As long as the basic mistakes aren't howlers I'm willing to forgive. It is
fiction after all.
Dale
--
Tut...@hotmail.com
--
a425couple
> How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
> I am reading a WWII novel which is historically (and
> geographically) inaccurate. It both bothers me and
> None the less, a well written, fun story. Thoughts?
It really grates on me.
Mostly, because it seems the majority of readers of
these popular novels / fiction lose sight of the reality
of it being fiction. The 'information' contained then
works it's way into their memory and becomes their
'knowledge'.
And from this 'knowledge' they form opinions on how
to act or approach real situations and decisions in life,
that are poor responses (because based on false base).
((poorly worded - I know - but hopefully you understand))
--
James Linn
I was watching a local news show and a piece about a veteran visiting a
school class. It was a man who had been a radar operator in Britain.
He told the class that one of the things that won the war was the fact
that Britain had radar and Germany didn't.
I shuddered - if it had been in a bar, thats one thing, but these kids
will believe for the rest of their lives what he told them.
Historical fiction - I have enjoed the odd Deighton and Follett novel.
But I don't look at them as meticulously accurate.
James
--
John...@tricolour.queensu.ca
geo...@ankerstein.org wrote:
> How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
> I am reading a WWII novel which is historically (and
> geographically) inaccurate.
Generally dislike it intensely although I am willing to accept some
small deviations if the author acknowledges them. Thus if there is a
point where the geography of a town is a bit off or a date is moved
slightly to accommodate the plot and the author points this out then I
don't mind. OTOH something like you describe is just crap. It just
seems to show that the author is incompetent or too lazy to do his/her
research.
It is a little like watching that movie (TV show?) where someone
escapes from a German castle and leaps into the river. Then the camera
pulls back for a longer shot and we see that it is le Chāteau de
Chenonceau in the Loire Valley. One would have at least hoped that they
had not pretended that one of the most famous chateaux in the world was
a German castle. That's just plain idiocy.
While it's not WWII, I was reading a novel about the Roman invasion
of Britain where the author kept mentioning the navy using triremes.
It ruined the book totally.
John Kane
Kingston ON
--
Don Phillipson
> I am reading a WWII novel which is historically (and
> geographically) inaccurate. It both bothers me and
> reminds me that it is fiction. Not only does the
> author think that the Hartz Mountains are south of
> Berlin . . .
This seems unsurprising. Not many fiction authors
mention sound recording during WW2 but half those
I have come across describe Allied intelligence
officers using tape recorders, viz. were unaware
tape recorder technology was a German invention
unavailabe to the Allies before 1945. I doubt that
21st century authors will write about WW1 but I
should not be surprised to read in future about
radar tracking of Zeppelins over London in 1917.
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
--
John D Salt
@gnus01.u.washington.edu:
> How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
In general, I think it's preferable to historically inaccurate
history.
All the best,
John.
--
BonVie
--
Cub Driver
<dphil...@ncf.ca> wrote:
>Not many fiction authors
>mention sound recording during WW2 but half those
>I have come across describe Allied intelligence
>officers using tape recorders, viz. were unaware
>tape recorder technology was a German invention
>unavailabe to the Allies before 1945.
I believe that wire recorders were available in the U.S. in the 1940s.
Calling a wire recorder a tape recorder is surely a small sin!
We needn't go to fiction to find howlers of this sort. "Flyboys"
describes, among other howlers, how aircraft carrier decks in World
War II were dangerous places because of the spills of jet fuel.
And, dealing with a later war, "Dispatches" describes how when the
marines left Khe Sanh they broke up the tarmac and took it with them
(Kerr was referring to the pierced-steel planking). "The Best and the
Brightest" is illustrated with a photograph of the Martin B-26
Marauder, a WWII aircraft that supposedly saw action in Vietnam (it
was the Douglas A-26 Invader, which got a B designation postwar).
It's awfully difficult to break out of the vocabulary we use to enter
that of another time--and tricky, too, since the reader might
misunderstand. (Wire recorder? Why were they recording wire?)
Peter J Lusby
The key lies in the author's ability to get the reader to "suspend
disbelief". This is a principle first enumerated by John W Campbell
when he was editor Analog magazine. If a story grabs the reader well
enough the lapses in total accuracy can be overlooked, as long as they
are not too glaring. If the author puts jet planes in the Battle of
Britain, or has the USS Midway engaged in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the
suspension of disbelief break down. If, for the sake of moving a plot
along, he uses artistic license to tweak details here and there, such as
placing a particular unit in the right place on the wrong day, or the
wrong place on the right day, this ought to be acceptable. What is
always totally unacceptable is the writer who makes everything up as an
excuse not to research the background, but involves real people and real
incidents without regard to readily available facts about them.
I tend, when reading novels that have a historical setting, to want to
verify any details that are stated with precision. When, for example,
they talk about "Tuesday, August 14, 1927", I'm going to go straight for
the internet to see if that date really was a Tuesday. If it wasn't, I
stop reading right there.
Regards
Peter
--
"A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware"- Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier"
Peter J. Lusby
San Diego, California, USA
http://www.lusby.org
--
Hal Hanig
> geo...@ankerstein.org wrote:
>> How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
>> I am reading a WWII novel which is historically (and
>> geographically) inaccurate.
>
> Generally dislike it intensely although I am willing to accept some
> small deviations if the author acknowledges them. Thus if there is a
> point where the geography of a town is a bit off or a date is moved
> slightly to accommodate the plot and the author points this out then I
> don't mind. OTOH something like you describe is just crap. It just
> seems to show that the author is incompetent or too lazy to do his/her
> research.
You're way too critical, John. It's not supposed to be accurate.....it's
fiction. You know what that is....what Webster defines as "something made up or
imagined, as in a statement or story......". That's a totally unreasonable set
of standards you've placed on authors of fiction, IMHO.
--
geo...@ankerstein.org
James Linn wrote:
> He told the class that one of the things that won the war was the fact
> that Britain had radar and Germany didn't.
It is a normal human desire to believe that his part in
almost anything was the critical part. Ask anyone who
was in the air war. Bombers won the war, despite the
fact they had little impact (pun intended). You seldom
read here that the Soviets defeated the Germans and that
the western front contributed little to that defeat. But
one must feel that one's suffering during the Battle of
the Bulge was "important", even "critical" to the defeat
of Germany. Perhaps that is why so few study the eastern
front.
GFH
--
Michael Emrys
war...@mailblocks.com wrote on 6/20/05 9:10 AM:
> It's awfully difficult to break out of the vocabulary we use to enter that of
> another time--and tricky, too, since the reader might misunderstand. (Wire
> recorder? Why were they recording wire?)
Even more aggravating to me is the number of writers, and not primarily
those working in fiction, who apparently can never get the cardinal points
of the compass straight, who confuse north for south and east for west. One
would think they had never, ever bothered to look at a map.
Michael
--
Michael Emrys
halh...@charter.net.nospam.lga.highwinds-media.com wrote on 6/20/05 9:10
AM:
> It's not supposed to be accurate.....it's fiction. You know what that
> is....what Webster defines as "something made up or imagined, as in a
> statement or story......". That's a totally unreasonable set of standards
> you've placed on authors of fiction, IMHO.
Heh. Since that's legitimately a matter of taste and opinion, there is no
civilized way to debate it. I will say that there is some fraction of the
reading audience for whom glaring and "inexcusable" (as in "not required by
the plot") errors completely destroy one's sense of immersion, the ability
to surrender oneself to the story line and identify with the characters.
YMMV. :-)
Michael
--
Hal Hanig
> in article d96pq1$u0b$1...@gnus01.u.washington.edu, Hal Hanig at
> halh...@charter.net.nospam.lga.highwinds-media.com wrote on 6/20/05 9:10
> AM:
>
> civilized way to debate it. I will say that there is some fraction of the
> reading audience for whom glaring and "inexcusable" (as in "not required by
> the plot") errors completely destroy one's sense of immersion, the ability
> to surrender oneself to the story line and identify with the characters.
Undoubtedly true. However, the difference of opinion not only makes for horse
races, but for book sales (or their lack) as well. Vive la difference.....it's
the way of the world!
Hal
--
Bill Shatzer
-snip-
> We needn't go to fiction to find howlers of this sort. "Flyboys"
> describes, among other howlers, how aircraft carrier decks in World
> War II were dangerous places because of the spills of jet fuel.
My favorite was in a book on the Japanese Navy (the title of
which escapes) where every photo of the IJNS Yamato was labeled "the
battleship Tomato".
No such error appeared in the text - just on the photo pages.
Apparently someone other than the author with an overly literal
spell-checker was responsible for the photo pages which somehow
evaded the author's review prior to publication.
Cheers,
--
Cub Driver
wrote:
>Bombers won the war, despite the
>fact they had little impact (pun intended). You seldom
>read here that the Soviets defeated the Germans and that
>the western front contributed little to that defeat.
You state these as facts, but I don't agree with either one. Allied
bombing may not have won the war (though that is arguable with respect
to Japan) but it had a huge impact on both Germany and Japan. And
absent the western front, broadly defined (and including the
Anglo-American bomber campaign and the Murmansk run) Gemany would have
remained in command of eastern Europe for about the same length of
time that Russia did: more than a generation.
IMHO :)
Briarroot
Yes! I've noticed the same tendency quite often over the years, and in
some rather scholarly works too. What amazes me most is that the
publishers of these books allow such mistakes to make it into the final
edition. To the lowly reader such as myself, they can often be
glaringly obvious, ("Hmm, Midway is *not* east of Pearl Harbor, damn
it!") How can reputable publishers let these errors go uncorrected?
Don't they employ editors? It's rather mind boggling that such simple
mistakes can be made, and gives me pause to wonder what else may be
asserted in error that I lack the knowledge to correct, or simply
haven't noticed.
--
Bernardz
geo...@ankerstein.org says...
I remember being told by a writer that first a for most is to write a
story. The rest is secondary.
--
Members of a forum on the usenet who do not supply interesting on topic
discussions will find soon that the trolls have taken over their forum.
Observations of Bernard - No 79
--
Steven Schmid
(in article <d95h9k$1od$1...@gnus01.u.washington.edu>):
Don:
With respect, tape recording was an Allied (American) invention, and it was
used in WWII. I did my undergraduate days at the Illinois Institute of
Technology, and Marvin Camras taught the mechanical engineers our electrical
engineering courses. If you look up Mr. Camras' patents, you will find tape
recording among his few hundred. He's in the American Inventor's Hall of
Fame.
Marve told us once about his recording radio traffic and broadcasting the
recordings to persuade the Germans that a lot of troops were uncommitted in
England and waiting to embark for the real destination (Normandy being a
ruse). I went to one of his talks - he showed the evolution of recording on
wires to recording on polymer tapes, and how he owned the patents to all of
them. Definitely not a German invention.
The tongue-in-cheek comment at IIT was that the IIT Research Institute
building, all 50 or so stories of it, was built on the royalties from the
tape recording patent.
Best Regards,
Steve Schmid
--
Don Kirkman
<d99efs$vuj$1...@gnus01.u.washington.edu>:
>-snip-
Which calls forth an interesting question: which came first, the book
or the spell checker? :-) I know spell checkers were available as far
back as Pine but don't know when they first appeared or became widely
used.
--
Don Kirkman
--
hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com
geo...@ankerstein.org wrote:
> How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
> I am reading a WWII novel which is historically (and
> geographically) inaccurate.
Well, Casablanca is an entirely fictious movie
(none of the circumstances took place), but remains
excellent and inspiration.
--
Cub Driver
True, but was it historically inaccurate? Having a fictional bar, bar
owner, resistance fighter, chief of police, and German officer doesn't
make it inaccurate.
The movie might be deemed inaccurate if, say, there were no Germans in
that city in late 1940 or early 1941, whenever the story is supposed
to take place. Or if passage through Casablanca were easily down,
without visas or bribes or interminable waits.
Toward the end of the movie, the fugitives fly out on what I recall as
a Lockeed Electra type. I questioned that at the time, and I still
wonder about it. Why would a French or Portugese airline be flying
Electras? It just doesn't seem likely. That's a possible inaccuracy,
but it doesn't affect the essential truth of the film.
Roman Werpachowski
> On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 18:48:21 +0000 (UTC), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>>> How do you feel about historically inacurate fiction?
>>> I am reading a WWII novel which is historically (and
>>> geographically) inaccurate.
>>
>>Well, Casablanca is an entirely fictious movie
>>(none of the circumstances took place), but remains
>>excellent and inspiration.
>
> True, but was it historically inaccurate? Having a fictional bar, bar
> owner, resistance fighter, chief of police, and German officer doesn't
> make it inaccurate.
It might be considered slightly unrealistic because of the fact that the
resistance guy escapes before the eyes of local French authorities.
Also, I was always wary of the importance they attribute in the film to
French resistance. Was is it really that important?
--
Roman Werpachowski
/--------==============--------\
| http://www.cft.edu.pl/~roman |
\--------==============--------/
--
John...@tricolour.queensu.ca
Maybe but if the author cannot get even basic details right I don't
want to read his/her books. If Munich is north of Frankfort or the
Home Fleet is spending WWII in Portsmouth I assume that the author has
not enough pride in their work for me to waste my time reading the
book.
To some extend this is the same for movies. There is a movie
(Sounder?) set in the American south in the 1930s. It was almost ruined
for me in the opening scene when a car drove by a herd of charlois
cattle. AFAIK, there were no charlois in the USA before the 1960s.
As I say the author does not have to get everything right but the basic
history, geography and general details need to be true. Otherwise I
can read science fiction
John Kane
--
Roman Werpachowski
John...@tricolour.queensu.ca wrote:
> Maybe but if the author cannot get even basic details right I don't
> want to read his/her books. If Munich is north of Frankfort or the
> Home Fleet is spending WWII in Portsmouth I assume that the author has
> not enough pride in their work for me to waste my time reading the
> book.
>
> To some extend this is the same for movies. There is a movie
> (Sounder?) set in the American south in the 1930s. It was almost ruined
> for me in the opening scene when a car drove by a herd of charlois
> cattle. AFAIK, there were no charlois in the USA before the 1960s.
>
> As I say the author does not have to get everything right but the basic
> history, geography and general details need to be true. Otherwise I
> can read science fiction
The problem is, what you call 'basics' is 'details' for many other
people. Charlois cattle, for instance...
Claus-Jürgen Heigl
> With respect, tape recording was an Allied (American) invention, and it was
> used in WWII. I did my undergraduate days at the Illinois Institute of
> Technology, and Marvin Camras taught the mechanical engineers our electrical
> engineering courses. If you look up Mr. Camras' patents, you will find tape
> recording among his few hundred. He's in the American Inventor's Hall of
> Fame.
Wikipedia names magnetic tape recording a German invention, by Fritz
Pfleumer in 1928.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape
Modern magnetic tape on plastic film was invented by BASF, a German
company, around 1935/36.
Camras inventions were later. In 1939 he invented a wire recorder which
was the sound recording device the US military used during WW2. A
US-made tape recorder was only made after the war.
Claus-Juergen Heigl
--
Bill Shatzer
-snip-
> Toward the end of the movie, the fugitives fly out on what I recall as
> a Lockeed Electra type. I questioned that at the time, and I still
> wonder about it. Why would a French or Portugese airline be flying
> Electras? It just doesn't seem likely. That's a possible inaccuracy,
> but it doesn't affect the essential truth of the film.
An interesting bit of movie trivia there.
>From http://www.snopes.com/disney/parks/casablan.htm
That final scene, in which Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund
(Ingrid Bergman) say their final goodbyes as the plane to Lisbon (the
one which will carry Ilsa out of Rick's life forever) warms up in the
background is one of the most famous scenes in cinematic history, and
this is the scene Disney recreated in their Great Movie Ride, for
which they needed a real Lockheed Electra 12A. However, when Warner
Bros. filmed the scene, they found their soundstage was too small to
accommodate a real airplane, so the studio's prop men constructed
half- and quarter-size models of a Lockheed Electra 12A out of plywood
and balsa. Midgets garbed in jumpsuits were hired to move in and
around the replica planes to camouflage their smaller-than-life scale,
and the whole scene was swathed in machine-generated fog to further
conceal the artificiality of the setting.
Cheers,
--
Bob Martin
>To some extend this is the same for movies. There is a movie
>(Sounder?) set in the American south in the 1930s. It was almost ruined
>for me in the opening scene when a car drove by a herd of charlois
>cattle. AFAIK, there were no charlois in the USA before the 1960s.
Did you mean Charolais?
--
Roman Werpachowski
So much for historical accuracy... it realy ruined this post for me!
John...@tricolour.queensu.ca
Yes. I though had that wrong but was too lazy to look it up.
--
John...@tricolour.queensu.ca
Very true, I was just trying to point out my "slightly" low tolerance
:) I remember reading a novel that had a scene in the tunnel in the
airport in Bahrain. I gave the author the benefit of the doubt since
the last time I had been in Manama they were renovating the airport and
maybe the tunnel was really there. And if nothing else it was only one
slip.
On the other hand more basics like "Munich north of Frankfort" or "the
Home Fleet in Portsmouth" is just totally sloppy. If somone writes
1943 when it should be 1944 well it could be a typo or a just a memory
lapse. If the writer gets the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor wrong
I am not impressed. A movie I remember seeing on TV many years ago had
the Bismarck (?) played by a US cruiser. It was funny but not a problem
since it probably was not easy to find a equvalent German vessel. I
believe they all sank.
It jars when a writer gets something very wrong and does it
continually. One mistake is annoying but certainly forgivable.
Repeated mistakes are IMO a hint I may not want to read the book. I
would have hoped between the author and a factchecker they would have
gotten most of the facts right.
John Kane
Kingston ON
--
Andrew Clark
> A movie I remember seeing on TV
> many years ago had
> the Bismarck (?) played by a US
> cruiser.
I think this was "Battle of the River Plate", in which Graf
Spree was represented by a modern US cruiser. Trouble was,
IIRC, the filmmakers didn't even take the USN markings and
hull number off...
--
Spiv
news:da156p$ura$1...@gnus01.u.washington.edu...
> <John...@tricolour.queensu.ca> wrote
>
> > A movie I remember seeing on TV
> > many years ago had
> > the Bismarck (?) played by a US
> > cruiser.
>
> I think this was "Battle of the River Plate", in which Graf
> Spree was represented by a modern US cruiser.
Quite true. However it was difficult to use an old German battleship.
> Trouble was, IIRC, the filmmakers didn't
> even take the USN markings and hull number off...
That did stand out..
--
Andrew Robert Breen
Addressed quite nicely in the film by an aside that GS
was disguised as a US cruiser :)
GS _had_ disguised herself as a US cruiser during her 1939
cruise, though she wasn't thus at the time of the action off
the Plate.
--
Andy Breen ~ Interplanetary Scintillation Research Group
http://users.aber.ac.uk/azb/
"Time has stopped, says the Black Lion clock
and eternity has begun" (Dylan Thomas)
--
John...@tricolour.queensu.ca
Yes, that was it. I don't remember the markings but I do remember the
hull number. I think that may have been why I found it so funny.
Thanks.
John Kane
--
b.ing...@shaw.ca
And I certainly hope the students do remember that lesson, but the
veteran was correct.
From Google hit number one, keywords "radar," "history, and "Britain":
"...the early warning radar system (called "Chain Home") that they
built around the British Isles warned them of all aerial invasions.
This gave the outnumbered Royal Air Force the edge they needed to
defeat the German Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain."
Chain Home allowed the RAF to put sufficient numbers of fighters into
the air to meet fleets of German bombers in time to prevent much of the
damage that they otherwise would have caused. The Battle of Britain was
such a near-run thing that just such small advantages helped to make
all the difference. It also took the incredible "can do" attitude of
the RAF pilots, their ground crews, and all of the personnel on the
ground, not to mention supurb flying machines.
I gave up on Follett when one of his protagonists got shot through the
butt with a .50-calibre machine gun bullet fired from a nearby Russian
tank -- and kept running! Obviously, Deighton was never shot by so much
as a BB gun!
Bob
--
b.ing...@shaw.ca
knowledgeable about WWII, never reads fiction. I don't get it! Them,
not fiction. I get fiction.
A good fiction writer - a Hemingway, a Tolstoy, a Steinbeck, or a
Styron (all of whom wrote about war and/or the military), not to
mention any number of wonderful living authors - has the ability and
the freedom to let the reader not merely learn about their subject, but
to experience it. As informative and wonderful and important as good
non-fiction writing is, and I read a lot of it, it cannot place the
reader inside the mind of their protagonists.
If you don't believe me, read whatever you can find in the way of
nonfiction about training in the Marine Corps. Then read William
Styron's novella, *The Long March*. Then let me know whether it was the
non-fiction or the novella which comes closest to blistering your feet
and your soul. Another good example is the German novel, *Das Boot*
(The Boat), about the War of the Atlantic from the perspective of the
German submariner. No work of non-fiction that I have read comes as
close to making me feel like I myself have experienced a depth-charge
attack, or nearly suffocated in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and
sulphuric acid and the odors of urine and feces. Of course, you could
argue that thank you, but you'd rather not experience those things,
even in fiction. *Das Boot* the movie, by the way, is a good but
somewhat hollow representation of the book. I wish I could read the
original novel in German; I imagine that the English translation
scarcely does it justice.
Bob
(Retired high school English teacher)
--
Roman Werpachowski
> My dad never read fiction. One of good friends, who is very
> knowledgeable about WWII, never reads fiction. I don't get it! Them,
> not fiction. I get fiction.
>
> A good fiction writer - a Hemingway, a Tolstoy, a Steinbeck, or a
> Styron (all of whom wrote about war and/or the military), not to
> mention any number of wonderful living authors - has the ability and
> the freedom to let the reader not merely learn about their subject, but
> to experience it. As informative and wonderful and important as good
> non-fiction writing is, and I read a lot of it, it cannot place the
> reader inside the mind of their protagonists.
More correctly, novels give you the author's idea of the experience. Not
the real experience. I think reading diaries of people who lived there
and then would be more profitable. Not memories, even. Diaries.
b.ing...@shaw.ca
good writer, but I have never been able to put the experience on paper
in a convincing way, despite many attempts. All I have managed is a
literate point-by-point explanation of what happened. The reader
doesn't really get into my head, into the space I was in when Marines
around me were dying and I myself was wounded. Yet I have read novels,
by authors who never saw combat, which make the combat experience as
real as it can get. Stephen Crane was not a soldier, yet I've never
heard anyone criticize his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, for being
an inaccurate portrayal of combat in the American Civil War. The magic
of fiction is that in the hands of a gifted author, other lives can
become the reader's life.
As far as diaries go, well, maybe. It depends on whether the diarist
can actually write. Most people in my experience cananot write. Just
today I edited a short article written by an architect. I can only
assume that one can become an architect without passing a freshman
composition class. Even if a person can write, a diary is after all
only the expression of a recent memory, colored by perceptions which
may or may not reflect reality. A historian could look at the larger
picture and perhaps explain my platoon's part in it. A novelist could
help the reader be a member of that platoon, but the reader would have
to drop his or her prejudices against fiction. Taking a college
literature course would help.
Bob
--
Rich Rostrom
>>Well, Casablanca is an entirely fictious movie
>>(none of the circumstances took place), but remains
>>excellent and inspiration.
>
>True, but was it historically inaccurate? Having a fictional bar, bar
>owner, resistance fighter, chief of police, and German officer doesn't
>make it inaccurate.
It's riddled with errors.
For instance, take the stolen 'letters of transit'
that will get _anyone_ out of Casablanca. They
are so authoritative (it is said) because they were
signed by General _De Gaulle_. Riiight!
Victor Laszlo is "Czechoslovakian", but Laszlo is
a Magyar name. There were some ethnic Magyars in
Slovakia, so it's not impossible, but it's
comparable to having an Italian character named
Schwartz.
The "chief of police" in this large city is only a
captain. This same captain is old enough to have
participated in the occupation of Germany in 1918,
but 23 years later, he's still only a captain.
The dim-witted tourist victimized by a pickpocket
is clearly British. What's a British tourist doing
in Vichy French territory? He would be arrested
and interned immediately.
>The movie might be deemed inaccurate if, say, there were no Germans in
>that city in late 1940 or early 1941, whenever the story is supposed
>to take place.
I believe that a newspaper head indicates that
it is early December 1941. While German agents
might be present in Casablanca, they wouldn't
be flaunting their presence, and they wouldn't
be throwing their weight around. The Vichy
regime made a point (at times) of keeping a
distance from Germany.
>Or if passage through Casablanca were easily down,
>without visas or bribes or interminable waits.
I'm not sure about this, but I believe the
great problem for would-be emigrants from
Nazi Europe was not getting out, it was
getting in somewhere else. One had to have
an entrance visa for some other country.
Thus the importance of Chiune Sugihara, the
Japanese consul general in Lithuania, who
issued over 10,000 entrance visas to Jews
seeking escape from the obvious dangers in
that region. Also Jewish resentment toward
Britain's policy of restricting Jewish
immigration to Palestine; and the infamous
"Voyage of the Damned" episode, where Hitler
allowed a shipload of Jewish refugees to
leave Germany, but they were refused admission
elsewhere.
>Toward the end of the movie, the fugitives fly out on what I recall as
>a Lockeed Electra type. I questioned that at the time, and I still
>wonder about it. Why would a French or Portugese airline be flying
>Electras?
Planes were exported all the time. The DC-3 was ubiquitous.
Japan even built their own DC-3s under a pre-war license.
I don't see anything horrifically unlikely in a European
airline having bought a few planes from a US firm.
--
| The shocking lack of a fleet of modern luxury |
| dirigibles is only one of a great many things that |
| are seriously wrong with this here world. |
| -- blogger "Coop" at Positive Ape Index |
--
jussi....@faf.mil.fi
> For instance, take the stolen 'letters of transit' that will get
> _anyone_ out of Casablanca. They are so authoritative (it is said)
> because they were signed by General _De Gaulle_. Riiight!
Sorry, Rich, but this is actually an erroneous representation of the
film, not an error in the film. Because in the film, the letters of
transit are signed by general _Weygand_.
I realize that many copies of the screenplay that are available online
also include the words "De Gaulle" in Ugarte's line, but that's just
plain wrong. Obviously, _I_ have seen the film many times myself, and I
checked it out again today just to be sure. Ugarte himself says very
clearly "general Weygand", the Finnish subtitles read "Weygand", the
French subtitles read "Weygand", and I'm willing to bet good money that
if anyone could procure the original script from the Warner Brothers
archives, even that would contain the name "Weygand".
By the way, the Wikipedia entry on "Casablanca" mentions this peculiar
misinterpretation as "de Gaulle" among the many myths that have spawned
around the film. Hard to say where it has emerged from.
> Victor Laszlo is "Czechoslovakian", but Laszlo is a Magyar name. There
> were some ethnic Magyars in Slovakia
"Some", indeed. We're talking of over a million people. Of course, an
ethnic Hungarian from Slovakia would not be a particularly likely to
become an anti-Nazi resistance leader, given that in general, the local
Magyar population bore a deep grudge against Trianon peace treaty and
thus was more inclined to collaborate with the Axis.
> so it's not impossible, but it's comparable to having an Italian
> character named Schwartz.
Given the intermarriage and acculturation between the Magyars and
Slovaks for over centuries, it's more likely than you might think.
Scandinavian and German family names were not uncommon among Latvians
and Estonians; Swedish family names were still very common even among
Finnish-speaking Finns; and there were - and still are - Poles who
continued to have (usually transcribed) Byelorussian, Ukrainian or even
German family names. And yes, there are also Slovaks who have Hungarian
last names.
Of course, this latent contrast between his name and nationality is
also important for Laszlo's character. Since the film represents him as
the icon of the entire _European_ resistance, his own ethnic background
has to be a bit obscure for the purposes of the story, so that he can
more easily pass as a "citizen of the world".
If we're looking for more clear improbabilities in the film, well, I've
always found it very unlikely that a young refugee woman from Bulgaria
in 1941 could be so fluent in English...
Cheers,
Jalonen
--
Roman Werpachowski
> Scandinavian and German family names were not uncommon among Latvians
> and Estonians; Swedish family names were still very common even among
> Finnish-speaking Finns; and there were - and still are - Poles who
> continued to have (usually transcribed) Byelorussian, Ukrainian or even
> German family names. And yes, there are also Slovaks who have Hungarian
> last names.
My grandfather's family name was Treugutt. My great-great-grandmothers'
family names' were Deyke and Tomassi. First two are of German origin,
third is Hungarian. All these people were Poles, bone and marrow. How
high on the improbability scale do I score?
David Wilma
I started doing some web surfing and find that a comic book in 1940
mentioned heavy water.
(heavy water is a necessary component in the manufacture of uranium nuclear
devices.)
Hitchcock made the movie Notorious with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. They
were after uranium hidden in wine bottles.
Any other accidentally accurate historical fiction?
--
David Wilma, Deputy Director
www.HistoryLink.org, the online encyclopedia of Washington State History
http://historylink.org/feedback/funding_petition.cfm
--
James Linn
I don't need lectures Bob, on staying out of bars, or on contradicting a
veteran who claimed the Germans never had radar.
The point Bob, is that Germany indeed did have Radar, deployed as early
as 1941. They perhaps didn't use it as effectively as the British, but
night bombing made it more difficult to intercept. Indeed the germans
had not had radar, Window would not have been invented(foil strips to
foil German radar. And I wouldn't have seen those pictures of German
night fighters with radar antenna on them.
And before you poke fun at Deighton, try reading some of his non
fiction. He is quite meticulous at his facts and figures.
James
--
Don Phillipson
> Germany indeed did have Radar, deployed as early as 1941.
Half right . . . German centimetric (high frequency, high
accuracy) appears to have been better in quality than the
British, thus enabled ground control of night fighters which
Britain never attempted on the same scale: cf. also
commando raids on Bruneval and other Freya radar units
to aid British countermeasures. JL is right that, regardless
of technical quality, the British organized radar better,
cf. the Fighter Command control system of 1940.
Notoriously, Germans attempted in the summer of 1939
to assess British radar research by sending an airship
(Zeppelin type) up the east coast off Bawdsey, first site
of TRE. It appears that for no particular reason Bawdsey
was not transmitting when the unseen airship was near
enough, thus frustrating the mission.
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
--
Michael Emrys
dphil...@ncf.ca wrote on 7/26/05 4:41 PM:
> Notoriously, Germans attempted in the summer of 1939 to assess British radar
> research by sending an airship (Zeppelin type) up the east coast off Bawdsey,
> first site of TRE. It appears that for no particular reason Bawdsey was not
> transmitting when the unseen airship was near enough, thus frustrating the
> mission.
You are probably better informed on this than I, but I do recall reading
somewhere some time ago that the British had either discovered or guessed
the purpose of this mission and had therefore deliberately turned off the
radar while the airship was in range. It could be a case of taking credit
where credit is not due though, I suppose.
Michael
--
Andrew Clark
> German centimetric (high frequency, high
> accuracy) appears to have been better in
> quality than the British...
The Wuerzburg GCI radar used from 1940-45 was a decimetric,
not centimetric radar: it operated on a wave length of 50-53
cm. It was roughly equivalent in performance to the British
type 11 GCI, introduced 1942. The British Type 13, developed
1942 but not deployed operationally until 1944, was a 3 cm
centrimetric GCI radar of very significantly higher
performance than the Wuerzburg.
> thus enabled ground control of
> night fighters which Britain never
> attempted on the same scale:
Britain had no need for ground control of night fighters on
the same scale as Germany, because Britain had centrimetric
airborne search radar and Germany did not (the Lichtenstein
SN2 was a 200 cm radar). The elaborate nature of the German
night fighter control arrangements was due to German
technological inferiority, not superiority.
> cf. also commando raids on Bruneval
> and other Freya radar units
> to aid British countermeasures.
These raids were much more to discover German capabilities
than to advance British radar technology. The British did
not copy and German radar in WW2, whereas the Germans copied
several British radars including H2S.
> JL is right that, regardless
> of technical quality, the British organized
> radar better, cf. the Fighter Command
> control system of 1940.
Not quite. Britain organised its air defences better then
Germany in 1940. By 1942, the Germans had caught up in
purely organisational terms.
> Notoriously, Germans attempted in the summer
> of 1939 to assess British radar research by
> sending an airship (Zeppelin type) up the
> east coast off Bawdsey, first site of TRE.
> It appears that for no particular reason
> Bawdsey was not transmitting when the
> unseen airship was near
> enough, thus frustrating the mission.
No. The British happily tracked the airship on CH, but the
Germans were trying to detect the wrong frequencies and got
nothing in return.
>
> Don Phillipson
> Carlsbad Springs
> (Ottawa, Canada)
> Don Phillipson
> Carlsbad Springs
> (Ottawa, Canada)
> --
>
--
Spiv
The Germans were first to use the radar dish, look like modern TV satellite
dishes. On was seen on the French coast on a cliff, so a Commando unit
climbed the cliffs, took away the radar sets, and went back across the
Channel. The cheek of it.
You are right, the British never copied anything the Germans did. Although
at one point, for a short time, the Germans were ahead on some minor aspects
of radar - the rotating dish being one.
> The British did not copy and German
> radar in WW2, whereas the Germans copied
> several British radars including H2S.
Towards the end of the war the Germans were using British radio guidance
transmitters for navigation, using captured receiving sets from downed
aircraft.
> > JL is right that, regardless
> > of technical quality, the British organized
> > radar better, cf. the Fighter Command
> > control system of 1940.
>
> Not quite. Britain organised its air defences better then
> Germany in 1940. By 1942, the Germans had caught up in
> purely organisational terms.
>
> > Notoriously, Germans attempted in the summer
> > of 1939 to assess British radar research by
> > sending an airship (Zeppelin type) up the
> > east coast off Bawdsey, first site of TRE.
> > It appears that for no particular reason
> > Bawdsey was not transmitting when the
> > unseen airship was near
> > enough, thus frustrating the mission.
>
> No. The British happily tracked the airship on CH, but the
> Germans were trying to detect the wrong frequencies and got
> nothing in return.
They made a serious error in assessing the frequencies they detected too,
totally underestimating the British radar system. They didn't think radar
could effectively operate on those frequencies.
--